


Indigo Cobalt Cerulean

by ashgemini



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Post - X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 13:35:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16159982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashgemini/pseuds/ashgemini
Summary: There’s a blue patch on the side of Raven’s thigh. It’s so faint it could almost be a blood vessel, peaking out through her now pale skin. And maybe it is, maybe it’s wishful thinking, but it makes her feel better. Makes her feel like maybe Mystique is lurking just beneath her skin.





	Indigo Cobalt Cerulean

There’s a blue patch on the side of Raven’s thigh. It’s so faint it could almost be a blood vessel, peaking out through her now pale skin. And maybe it is, maybe it’s wishful thinking, but it makes her feel better. Makes her feel like maybe Mystique is lurking just beneath her skin.

Once Raven stops crying and screaming and throwing things at walls, she sells Erik out to the government. After that, she’s not really sure what to do. Her whole life has been running and fighting, which didn’t leave a whole lot of time to foster hobbies. She doesn’t have a resume, a permanent address, or a driver’s license.

She has money, of course. A few grand in cash squirreled away, you don’t live like she did without always having an escape plan. The money is in her tent at the Mutant Brotherhood camp, which poses a unique set of problems.

It turns out that when everyone is expecting a naked blue woman, you can put on jeans and a sweatshirt and waltz right in. Not all of Raven’s stealth and agility is a result of her powers, as it turns out.

Dark brown hair pulled back and tucked under a baseball cap and a duffle bag over her shoulder, she walks out of Erik’s camp and nobody even bats an eye. She thought her disguises gave her anonymity, but there’s more than one way to blend in.  

She goes to Manhattan. Raven has only been a few times, but she always liked it there. Her landlord is willing to forgo the proper identification when she presents him with the first three months’ rent in cash.

There’s a Jewish deli half a block from her apartment and she gets a job there. She learns to make rugalach and matzo ball soup and how to haggle with old ladies. Erik would’ve laughed at this, she thinks. 

It’s been 4 months since she was cured. She watched the rest of the coverage on the news, listened to reports on how Erik Lensherr is still missing, how the source of the cure now resides at Xavier’s Institute. Somewhere deep down inside, she cares about this, but she doesn’t touch that part of herself. Raven didn’t get to where she is without the ability to compartmentalize.

On a grim October day one of the old ladies who comes into the deli every Thursday afternoon thrusts a mewling ball of fur into Raven’s arms.

“Nice girl like you shouldn’t be alone, and Gertrude’s cat just had kittens,” Miriam won’t hear Raven’s protests, she just orders her usual pastrami sandwich and a black and white cookie and gives Raven a wink as she leaves the shop.

Raven names the cat Lox and the two of them despise each other. Lox shreds her curtains, vomits on the rug, and then hides under the sofa, all within a few hours of being brought home. Raven wouldn’t have it any other way.

Meanwhile, the blue patch on her thigh is starting to itch. She scratches idly at it while watching The Office one night and her skin flakes away. Without thinking too hard about what that might mean, Raven buys a bottle of industrial strength lotion to help with the itching.

 She’s still not really sure what she looks like. Raven expects to see yellow eyes and red hair every time she looks in the mirror, so this is all new to her. 

“Hmmm,” says Morty, another regular who comes in just after Halloween. This time he’s got his granddaughter with him, clutching at the sleeve of his jacket.

“What?” asks Raven, pouring soup into bowls. 

“I could’ve sworn your eyes were brown, but now they’re green as can be,” he slides money across the counter to Raven, “I must be getting old,” he adds with a laugh, picking up both bowls of soup and heading for a table.

She stares at herself in the mirror that night, trying to remember what color her eyes are. It’s not like there are pictures of her she can consult.

But life goes on, the weather gets colder and Christmas lights spring up throughout the city. Raven makes friends with the barista at the coffeeshop she goes to, with a man she bumps into leaving a bar in midtown, with so many others that she’s still surprised by it. _Maybe_ she thinks, _maybe this isn’t all bad._

The blue patch has gone from baby blue to nearly indigo and seems to be spreading. She runs her hand over it while she’s sitting at a café with her new friends.

“What’s that?” asks Jasper. He works as an investment banker, and sometimes Raven can’t believe this is her life. Who would’ve ever though she would’ve even spoken to an investment banker.

“Birthmark,” she says without missing a beat. Turns out being a good liar wasn’t a side effect of her mutation.

 She rings in the new year with a group of people she loves deeply, although some days she has trouble admitting it. Meanwhile, blue is starting to show in the crooks of her elbows, the back of her neck, in between her knuckles. She sees a report on the news about how in 70% of recorded cases, the cure has not been permanent.

She hopes she’s part of the other 30%.

Without much ceremony, Raven starts having sex. It had always been a weapon, but one night she’s curled up in bed with a pretty barista named Jane and she thinks she sees the appeal of this. Lox is curled up at their feet and Jane runs a hand through Raven’s hair, which now falls nearly to her breasts and is blonder than it ever has been.

“Are you turning blue?” Jane asks and Raven freezes.

Recovering quickly, she laughs and says “I don’t know, would you be into that?”

“I’m always into you,” says Jane, and then they’re a little too busy for conversation.

One day, Raven is in the shower. She’s exfoliating, which she’s only recently been able to. Before it would’ve mangled her scales. She rubs a handful of expensive sea salt scrub across the side of her leg and comes away with a handful of flaked off skin.

The skin has been flaking for weeks now, but Raven has been ignoring it. She can’t ignore it now though, she runs a hand over her stomach and reveals a patch of sapphire-blue skin. The floor of the shower is cloudy with skin flakes and the dark brown dripping off of her hair. She holds a lock of it in front of her face; it’s red again.

Raven isn’t sure how long she stands in the shower, watching her human self swirl down the drain.

Her shifting takes a few days to come back fully; she has to call in sick for those days. At first she can’t change her mass, but eventually that comes back too. She stands in her room, practicing. Little girl, fat man, Brad Pitt. Erik. Human Raven. Shifts herself into every shape she can think of until she’s sure it’s really back.

If her powers are back, then so are Erik’s. She should go to him, beg for her place in the brotherhood back. Her life is waiting for her, the life that she cried over for weeks.

But also, her friends are having a St. Patrick’s Day party tonight, so maybe she’ll go to that instead of rejoining the crusade.

Maybe having a human life is enough for Raven.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was like 10 when The Last Stand came out and it really bugged me that we never got to see what happened to Mystique and now 12 years later I'm writing fanfiction about it. Life sure is weird.


End file.
